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In an article in the 1984 edition of the STGA’s Guidelines magazine Nicholson said he had enlisted the advice and help of Dr John Barclay in organising classes and tests for the creation of a team of qualified guides who could intensify the interest of world visitors to Scotland.
Dr Barclay, who died aged 100 in 2010, was a former RAF Squadron leader whose best-selling book was a history of the city called ‘Edinburgh From The Earliest Times To The Present Day’
In the 1930s he had served as deputy head of the Edinburgh School of Salesmanship, a precursor to Napier University and Telford College, where he pioneered the use of slides as teaching tools, taking many of the photographs himself. During the second world war he served for several years as a squadron leader in East Anglia, where he taught servicemen and women at RAF bases. When he returned to Edinburgh he taught at the Royal High School, before becoming deputy and later acting director of the Department of Adult Education and Extra Mural Studies at Edinburgh University, where he would work from 1953 until he retired in 1975.
In the Scotsman’s obituary of the doctor, his daughter Alison recalled his incredible knowledge of the city.
‘I remember as a girl him taking me up Calton Hill and listing every single spire and rooftop in the city,” she said. ‘He knew what every single one of them was.’
Dr Barclay was also an avid fan of film, and he was a founding member of the Scottish Educational Film Association, later known as the Scottish Screen department at the National Library of Scotland.
It is clear that Nicolson was proud of the achievements of the STGA when he paid tribute to the organisation in 1984.
‘Scotland owes a debt of gratitude to her tourists guides who in 25 years have contributed so much to our national prosperity,’ he wrote.
‘Away back in 1959 ...the incoming tourist trade was bringing in a total revenue of £100m per year. Ten years earlier in 1949 our tourist income was £60m. Since 1959 the annual incoming tourist income in Scotland has risen each passing year and it would not surprise me if by the end of 1984 it had reached the astonishing total of nearly £1bn.
‘The quality of our guide services is such that practically every time I organise or handle incoming groups of world visitors, I am the recipient of letters from participants praising the knowledge and courtesy of those guides who accompanied them and ensured the success of their visit. ‘To me it has been a pleasure to have been associated for so long with the Scottish Tourist Guides.
Bill Combe passed his guiding exam when he was 30 and became one of the youngest driver guides at ECT.
However, his first official tour started out as a bit of an ordeal.
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